When you talk about a hitter "legitimizing" a lineup in the same breath as hitting is contagious, it gives me a sense that some hitters can be a carrier for the hitting virus, but others only contract it. What would be the difference between these two types of hitters. Certainly no one on the M's last year was a carrier. For example in the early part of 2010 the M's were hovering around .500 with pretty much only Guti providing anything near a MOTO bat. His hitting was NOT contagious though. In fact the others' malaise and swoons was contagious to him.
I definitely do not reject the idea of contagious hitting, but it would be invaluable to know what makes one hitters hot streaks contagious and the next hitters not.
If there is such a hitter I think his main quality would be to be able to change his own fortunes regardless of what was going on around him (opponent pitcher, whether his mates were slumping, whether he himself was slumping, whether the hotels bed last night was lumpy, etc.). There are some of these types of hitters of course. The Pujols of this world. Although Ichiro is a guy I would put in this category, but he of course didn't infect the M's last year at least.
Or is it more of a pushing water over a hill problem, once you have enough hitters to tilt the balance then the "contagion" flows freely. So now we are talking about a team having enough good hitters going good at the same time to get to the breaking point to bring the strugglers with them. And in that case the contagiousness of the player doesn't so much matter as how many of them there are. I think I am more inclined to buy this theory.
Of course as is usual i am sure it is a combination of all the above and 20 or 30 other factors not listed ;)
CS brought up a good point, and we need to split this out:
Very good point about heat and light. But let's talk about the evidence for and against line up protection, because it is just as troubling if a theory is accepted without evidence.
We presume that our pal CS meant, "It's just as troubling if a theory is accepted without (what I consider to be) good evidence"?
;- ) ... else my rant about "No Evidence Exist" was wasted cyberspace...
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=== Evidence Exists, Dept. ===
Like we said, Bill James' book on Win Shares presented a bunch of evidence, evidence that *I* found convincing, that hitting is contagious.
He started with a completely unbiased set of historical teams: those teams that lost a goodly number (X) games in Y1, and then made the World Series in Y2. Or something like that.
He analyzed the rosters for patterns in their Win Shares, and he noticed a distinct pattern reflected: (1) team leaders, usually present in Y1, did much better in Y2. (2) team followers, "caught up in the excitement" as James put it, definitely had UP years by their own standards in Y2.
That's evidence. There was no regression analysis involved, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be admissible in a litigation, right?
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Another form of evidence, that hitting is contagious, is that every player and manager who ever lived :- ) believes that it is. That is "evidence." Testimonial evidence.
"Testimony," in law, refers to that evidence given by a witness who simply makes a declaration of fact. Each time a witness is sworn in, it is a reaffirmation of our belief (as Americans) that truth can be established by the statement of reliable witnesses.
If all* baseball players testify that hitting is contagious, why does that testimony matter so little to us who don't play?
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FWIW, I actually have seen some published "studies" on the idea that "Hitting Is Contagious." Baseball Prospectus had one, in an annual, in the Cleveland Indians section. They found positive evidence for what they called "lineup synergy" -- that as more and more batters collected in a lineup, the less effective pitchers were against individual hitters...
Couldn't cite them at the moment. Have seen them.
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Lineup protection is a separate issue -- it refers to the idea that a batter will get better pitches to hit, with a thumper behind him. I'm not inclined to that, at all. I think a batter protects himself by being selective...
Batters' testimony is much less unanimous on this point. Ken Griffey Jr. used to complain when there was nobody behind him; I don't remember many other hitters emphasizing this point. But they will certainly talk about teamwide slumps.
FWIW, Bill James also believes in 1 but not 2. Bill is (or was) convinced that hitting is contagious, and is convinced that no such thing as lineup protection exists (or if it does, that its effects are so minimal that they can be safely ignored).
I'd also like to hear more on the case-against and case-for. I'm not married to the belief that Adam Dunn and Jim Thome would "legitimize" our lineup, but I believe that they would.
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When we say that we don't want "Hitting Is Contagious" to be accepted without evidence, what do we mean? That we don't want it to have credence until a Hardball Times-type study is published to that effect?
Has a Hardball Times-type study been published that says Michael Pineda is more valuable than David Aardsma? You believe that, right? As you debate trades this winter?
Pat Gillick, who has turned four losers into champions in as many attempts, has lots of beliefs that haven't been proven. Except in the macro sense that he wins. This doesn't prove that each of his beliefs are correct individually, but to all intents and purposes it demonstrates that his beliefs, taken as a collection, are useful.
GM's who win, tend to be interested in lineup legitimizers (or at least, as Taro points out, teamwide confidence). That's not gospel, but it's evidence.
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Cheers,
Dr D
Comments
it gives me a sense that some hitters can be a carrier for the hitting virus, but others only contract it.
:big grin:
What would be the difference between these two types of hitters.
Swagger. Whether overt or implied. A guy grinning as he steps in against their ace.
When Manny joined the Dodgers in 2008, their team OPS+ went from 85-90 to 120. I doubt that Manny was responsible for all 35 points...
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Ichiro doesn't influence American hitters because they just wish he'd go away...
I think much of it is just individual players trying to do too much on a bad offensive team. Players get in a mode where they're trying to hit XBHs when its not their game and destroy their overall offensive value.
I don't neccesarilly think that you need a big bat in the lineup to legitimize it (it could be well-balanced lineup), but the players need to have confidence in the offense or sometimes they never recover from slumps.
I definitely need to read more James. That kind of historical study is far more convincing to me, and thanks for slowing down to present your side more fully.
One quibble with the sample, however. It seems to eliminate teams for which the team leaders improved, but the rest of the team did not. If those teams outnumber the teams in James' study, that would suggest to me that we really haven't a reason for why sometimes the whole team improves and sometimes it does not.
If Ichiro, Figgins, and Smoak have monster years, for instance, but Jack Wilson, Michael Saunders, and Adam Moore flounder and the team struggles to stay around .500, is that not a counter-example to James' study?
Ichiro talks about the need for individual players to perform their tasks strongly, and then the offense is strong.
Agree 100% that the "lineup legitimizer" isn't the point, as such. Your refinement is more to the point than mine was.
Good stuff.
And he'd be the first to tell you that. We're not talking about a controlled study at all.
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He, and I, would simply say "If are shooting for a Cinderella team, this is the way it has usually happened before."
That's not the same thing as saying, "If you try the Cinderella recipe, it will work." Right.
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As you know, the human mind is not a computer. We do, and should, work on intuition and fuzzy logic. Chess GM's can't compete with computers using math. They can compete using intuition and fuzzy logic.
Just because we haven't proven how Cinderella teams work, that shouldn't stop us from seeing how suggestive the tendency is.
Many Cinderella teams won early in the season, and got their fragile confidences restored through the examples of a few leaders with swagger. We can benefit from that light bulb.
But we don't throw math out all together (I don't think that's what you are arguing).
We can use math to sharpen our logic and (hopefully) prevent us from going down rabbit trails.
If I say that all Cinderella teams have "x" ingredient--that is suggestive. But if I look closer and realize that of the teams that had "x"ingredient, only 1% became Cinderella teams, then I probably say, "I guess that's why they call 'em Cinderella teams," and move on.
I think there is a lot of wisdom in accepting that some things just happen because of random luck and can't be reliably explained by contagiousness or protection or what have you. It doesn't mean that I reject it wholecloth, but I focus more on how to build a winning ball club than hoping for lightning to strike.
Just my two cents.
What I foud striking about that study was that no less than 2/3 of the teams he looked at had a managerial change or a significant return from injury.
I don't believe, personally, that building a line-up that is not geared toward thumper-offense is a guarantee of line-up failure. If the Mariners all had down years together in 2010, it's not because they lacked a clean-up hitter IMHO...it's because they lacked clubhouse leadership and the ability to focused on putting hard at bats up there as a team. When they went through their 2-weeks, 8 runs slumps (and there were two or three of those), that was a series of really...really lazy at bats...the hitters were up there arm swinging with their eyes closed...it wasn't fear...it was laziness that I saw. It may be that what the team needed was not so much a power hitter or two...but a professional hitter or two in the middle of the order. Ichiro did his thing, but other than he and Figgins putting as many tough at bats as they could up there...the rest of the team got horribly...horribly lazy. A bunch of guys who had career P/PA near 4 suddenly put smaller numbers up in that category.